by Mike Bruton
An I&J steam trawler, Nerine, skippered by Captain Hendrik (‘Harry’) Goosen, and built in Grimsby, England (C Chapman, pers. comm., 2018), caught the first living coelacanth off the Chalumna River mouth to the south-west of East London on Thursday, 22nd December 1938. The trawler was named after the guardian sea nymph that was sent, in ancient mythology, to rescue shipwrecked sailors. The name is appropriate, as at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Nerine was commandeered by the South African Navy and, after being painted grey and fitted with a 3-inch gun, assumed duty as a minesweeper. In November 1941 she played a key role in the rescue of survivors from the wrecked liner, Dunedin Star, off the remote coast of South West Africa (now Namibia) (Spargo, 2008).
The steam-powered trawler, Nerine, that caught the first coelacanth.
Hendrik Goosen, interviewed in East London in 1986 and 1987, recalled that 22nd December 1938 had been a stormy day with a cold-water upwelling reaching onto the continental shelf. He had landed a meagre catch but decided to shoot his side-trawl once more about 5 kilometres offshore of the Chalumna River mouth, where he would not normally fish, at a depth of 40 fathoms (73 metres), to catch some ‘edibles’ for sale and ‘inedibles’ for the East London Museum and aquarium, as was his habit. In the course of his career, Captain Goosen collected many unusual specimens for the East London Museum and the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now SAIAB), including the rare circular seabat (Halieutaea fitzsimonsi), slender snipefish (Macroramphosus gracilis) and the very rare picarel (Spicara australis) (Bruton, 1990). That particular day’s catch included 2½ tonnes of ‘inedibles’ (sharks and rays), several bizarre deep-sea fishes, and one unusual large blue fish.
In 30 years of trawling, Goosen’s crew had never seen such a fish. When they showed it to Goosen, he commented, ‘It was so beautiful, at first I wanted to set it free, but I knew I had to keep it’ (Sunday Times, 14.1.1990). ‘It was pale mauve blue in colour with silvery markings’. To his surprise, he found that it was still alive. ‘He stretched out a hand and prodded it, then leapt back with a great start, for the creature heaved itself up and lunged at him with fearsome teeth, narrowly missing his hand’ (Bell, 1969). It is to his eternal credit that Goosen kept the coelacanth. In fact, he separated it from the pile of sharks and manhandled it towards a bin containing water. Unfortunately it was too large for the bin and died on deck.
Captain Hendrik Goosen.
After Hendrik Goosen died of a heart attack in relative obscurity in East London on 14th January 1990 at the age of 85, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer argued that he had not been given sufficient credit for the capture of the coelacanth.
‘Without Captain Goosen, there would never have been a coelacanth. He caught the first specimen … The JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology in Grahamstown also owes him a great deal. It wouldn’t have had many of its valuable specimens had it not been for Captain Goosen’s keen interest’ (M Courtenay-Latimer, Sunday Times 14.1.1990).
However, Goosen’s contribution has been generously acknowledged in all publications on the coelacanth, both local and international (e.g. Smith, 1956; Bell, 1969; Bruton, 1990, 2015, 2017, 2018; Thomson, 1991; Weinberg, 1999).
At quarter to ten on the morning of that fateful day, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer received a call on her newly installed telephone from the manager of I&J to say that they had collected some fish for her. Her father, Eric Latimer, reported in his diary that day:
‘Today Margie came home full of excitement about a wonderful fish. She is very worried because she says it is so big and [she] has nothing to put it into – it is too big to go into a bath. She says Capt. Goosen off the Trawler Nerine rang up to say there was a ton and a half of sharks brought in if she wanted anything she could fetch them. At first she said she was too busy because she had been busy cleaning and articulating the fossil bones from Tarkastad. Then she decided she would go to the harbour and wish the crew a Happy Christmas.
‘On the trawler she met an old Scots crewman who helped her look through the haul of fishes. “I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen … It was five foot long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy-dog tail”’ (Anon, 2004a and b; A Smith, 2004).
In Marjorie’s report to the Board of the East London Museum dated 9th February 1939 she recorded, ‘At first I thought it was a lung fish and then I realized that I didn’t know what it could be’; this is not surprising, as her main fields of expertise were birds and plants. But her naturalist’s instincts told her that it was something special, so she decided that ‘the only person who would help me without a laugh would be Dr JLB Smith of Rhodes University’, and sent a letter and sketch of the fish to him in Grahamstown on 23rd December 1938, two days before Christmas.
Richard Greenwell (1989) of the International Society of Cryptozoology (a society that studies animals whose existence is questionable), sketched the event as follows:
‘The day was December 22, 1938. In Europe, the clouds of war continued to gather following Hitler’s takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia. In isolationist and complacent America, Hollywood was putting the finishing touches to Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. And in East London, South Africa, a 32-year-old naturalist named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was putting the finishing touches to the mounting of a fossil reptile in its new display case at the East London Museum. At 10 a.m. the telephone rang. It was a call that was to change Courtenay-Latimer’s life – and the history of zoology – forever.’
As Smith was on holiday at the time in Knysna, recuperating from an illness but also marking examination papers, Marjorie’s letter was forwarded to him there, but only arrived on 3rd January 1939, 12 days later. The sketch that she enclosed, which showed the main diagnostic features of the fish, such as its bony head, the extra lobe on the tail fin (which she called its ‘puppy dog tail’), lobed fins and large scales, has become one of the most iconic doodles in the history of zoology, comparable to Darwin’s historic ‘I think!’ diagram of a family tree.
Marjorie had a desperate time trying to preserve the large fish, which weighed 57.6 kilograms and, after trying the hospital mortuary and the local cold-storage depot, she trundled it on a borrowed handcart, with the help of her assistant, Enoch Elias, over 2 kilometres from Upper Oxford Street to Nahoon View Road, where a part-time taxidermist, Robert Center, worked. By now the bright blue scales had faded to dull grey and the fish had started to rot. Although they wrapped it in cloth soaked in formalin, the soft organs soon decomposed and were discarded, for which she was later unfairly criticised. She had little choice at the time as her museum focused mainly on dry displays and was very poorly equipped for preserving large, wet specimens. As Center had no idea what a living coelacanth looked like, he mounted the paired, lobed fins pointing downwards, like limbs, which resulted in journalists coining the nickname, ‘old four legs’. We now know that the coelacanth does not ‘walk’ on its lobed fins but hovers above the bottom, with the paired fins performing exquisite sculling movements.
By 9th January 1939 Marjorie had not as yet heard from Smith and was becoming very anxious. She was also experiencing trouble at the museum, as her father observed:
‘Margie is furious with Dr Bruce-Bays3. She says she cannot understand him, he is most annoyed about the fish – says it is a Rock Cod and she is foolish making such a song about it, when Dr Smith sees it he will laugh at her and he couldn’t be bothered with the thing. Margie is very upset and worried – she persists that she is sure it is something wonderful … I have become interested in this fish story and wonder how it will end’ (E Latimer diary, 7th January 1939).
Forty-four days elapsed between JLB’s reading Marjorie’s first letter and his finally being able to examine the specimen in East London and confirm its identity – this must have been agony for him! He eventually arrived at the Ea
st London Museum on 16th February 1939 and rushed to see the strange fish.
‘Although I came prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was no shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was a true Coelacanth. It could have been one of those creatures of 200 million years ago come alive again’ (Smith, 1956).
Smith said to Marjorie, ‘I always knew somewhere, or somehow, a primitive fish of this nature would appear’. Another of his ‘premonitions’!
During their early relationship there was some needle between Margaret Smith and Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. Marjorie was incensed when Margaret later claimed that she was ‘out shopping’ when JLB arrived at the museum to inspect the coelacanth for the first time (Thomson, 1991). She insists that she arrived at work very early that day in order to be present for the big occasion. She was also annoyed when Margaret said that she had not appreciated the importance of the coelacanth – yet she was the one who had saved it for science. In later years, however, they built up a very cordial relationship and attended meetings and conferences together.
Dr Bruce-Bays, Chairman of the Board of the museum, then arrived. He had not met JLB Smith before and seemed visibly surprised that this lean fellow (dressed in field khakis as he had been out collecting fish earlier that morning) was the revered fish expert.
‘I am slight and thin and had then hardly any grey hairs; in fact, despite all I have endured there are too few even now. His features did not change, but his eyes and that queer power of reading the thoughts in other men’s minds told me exactly what was in his. What! Is this skinny little fellow your expert? In those clothes I must have appeared very young to that dignified and portly old man, far too young to be able to give so startling an opinion about this fish. He would have to weigh this matter very carefully indeed before permitting the Museum to be involved in any fiasco from youthful enthusiasm. … the many ramifications of the discovery soon convinced him that it was not just an old fish but something of very much greater importance. He forgot my apparent youth, my lack of flesh and my clothes, his doubts had clearly evaporated, and his parting words and handshake were warm, almost enthusiastic’ (Smith, 1956).
Soon news of the discovery reached the media. Smith tried to keep it secret until he had published his description of the new species, but he had no hope of doing so as the East London Museum needed the publicity. Newspapers and radio stations throughout the Western world broadcast the news and put the museum, East London and South African science on the world map. On 20th February 1939 the Eastern Province Herald trumpeted, ‘Best Fish Story in 50,000,000 Years. One of the Most Sensational Scientific Discoveries of the Century’.
JLB Smith in 1939.
The commercial value of the first coelacanth also soon became apparent to the Board of the East London Museum, and some of its members were keen to sell it to raise funds for their impoverished institution. Early in June 1939 Marjorie was asked by Bruce-Bays to type a letter; but when she read its contents, she refused to do so. The letter was addressed to the British Museum and offered the coelacanth for sale for £5,000 (Ribbink, 2004). Marjorie also informed the Board, in a very forthright manner that, if the letter was sent, she would resign immediately. To her surprise, Bruce-Bays backed down immediately, but the issue was raised again in July 1939 and this time the Board asked JLB Smith’s advice. He told them that the coelacanth’s value ‘was beyond any sum of money, and it would always draw world-wide attention’ to their museum (Smith, 1956; Bell, 1969). This time the matter was settled; the coelacanth would stay.
Media coverage in early 1939 on the capture of the first coelacanth.
There is no doubt that this was a wise decision as the discovery of ‘old four legs’ put the East London Museum on the world map and provided considerable impetus for the development of ichthyology and museology in South Africa. Furthermore, some patronising colonial attitudes were challenged by the decision to keep the specimen in South Africa rather than send it to a well-established European museum, where it would disappear into their vast collections. Throughout his career almost all the fish specimens that JLB Smith and his collaborators collected in Africa stayed in South Africa, although donations or loans of material were occasionally sent abroad, as is customary in taxonomic research.
On 22nd February 1939 the East London Museum sent the specimen by train to Grahamstown, under police guard. It was placed in a special room in the Smiths’ house. ‘It had a curious, powerful, and penetrating odour, an odour that in the coming weeks was always to pervade our lives, awake or asleep’ (Smith, 1956). His household was drilled in fish protection measures: the fish was never to be left alone and, if there was a fire, it should be saved before anything else.
‘Steenbras’, the house that JLB Smith had built in Gilbert Street, Grahamstown, where he described the first coelacanth in 1939 and where most of the illustrations for the first edition of The Sea Fishes of Southern Africa were prepared from 1945 to 1948.
Smith faced an ethical dilemma. Could he rightfully claim the fish as his own, and go ahead and describe it himself, or should he share this responsibility with others? He is firm in this regard in his writings:
‘One curious feature of this whole affair was that at no time did I look upon it as anything but my own. There was no question in my mind that I had to take full responsibility for the decision of the identity of this creature. … It was perhaps due to that curious premonition that fate had prepared this occasion for me, and that, come what may, I must face it alone…. I knew that I had to go on and take the decision alone. It was do or die. It was indeed characteristic of all my work on fishes that right from the very start I struggled alone, possibly because no help was available even had I wanted it, but certainly because I am what my wife calls a “Lone Wolf” and work best on my own’ (Smith, 1956).
JLB’s admission that he preferred working on his own is telling, and points to a conscious decision to exclude other possible input, such as that of Barnard. When he published his major treatise on the coelacanth, he did not cross-reference to anyone else’s work in the entire document, which is almost unheard-of in scientific publications.
From January to June 1939 he and Margaret worked furiously on the description of what would later be regarded as ‘the zoological find of the century’ (Greenwell, 1990) and ‘the greatest biological sensation of the 20th century’ (Balon, 1991). The manuscript describing the fish was submitted to a scientific journal just four days before their son, William, was born. It was a baptism of fire for the young wife, and the prelude to 30 years of hard work and absolute dedication as assistant to JLB Smith. Smith later wrote:
‘It was an intense and stressful period. We had no social life, business and financial affairs took a back seat, and our food reached its destination over and between sheets of manuscript. We had no conversation, no thoughts, no ideas nor eyes, for anything except the Coelacanth, all day and all night. We could never forget it, certainly not with that smell’ (Smith, 1956).
When he dissected the fish JLB insisted that Margaret should witness the entire process, bone by bone, ‘in case something happened to him and she had to continue his work’ (SATV documentary, 1976). During this painstaking work Smith was delighted to discover that the modern coelacanth shared many features with its extinct relatives, and the unchanging nature of its external anatomy over millions of years became increasingly apparent. For instance, he discovered a fine chain of sensory bones just behind the head that had previously been found in ancient, fossilised coelacanths, but not in any other fish.
Smith published his first, single-page note, with one illustration, on the discovery of the first coelacanth, ‘A living fish of Mesozoic type’, on 18th March 1939 in Nature (Smith, 1939a), followed by a four-page article, ‘A surviving fish of the order Actinistia’, with five illustrations, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa (Smith, 1939b). He
named the fish Latimeria chalumnae, after Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer and the Chalumna River, and it was placed in a new fish family, the Latimeriidae; its common name is the ‘Indian Ocean coelacanth’.
On 16th March 1939 John Roxborough (‘JR’) Norman (1939), ichthyologist at the British Museum (Natural History), read a paper on Smith’s discovery to the Linnean Society of London, the same august body that had first heard about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection back in 1858. After Norman’s presentation, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, then Director of the British Museum (Natural History) and the author of the definitive catalogue of fossil fishes that Barnard had sent to Smith, commented on the similarity of the living coelacanth to fossil forms, such as Macropoma. He added that the coelacanth was possibly the most important zoological discovery since the Australian lungfish, thought at first to be an amphibian, which had been discovered in South America (1836), Africa (1837) and Australia (1869) (Thomson, 1991; Weinberg, 1999)4. There was no doubt about Smith’s discovery now – it had entered the mainstream of scientific discourse.
Smith published a further note, ‘A living coelacanth fish from South Africa’, in Nature (Smith, 1939c), and then his major 106-page monograph, ‘A Living Coelacanthid Fish from South Africa’, with 19 figures and 44 plates, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 5 (Smith, 1939d). He provided a remarkably complete description of Latimeria chalumnae, especially considering the state of the specimen.
Carl Hubbs (1968), the leading American ichthyologist, stated that Smith’s description of the first coelacanth was ‘perhaps the most meticulously detailed account ever accorded a fish specimen – at least of a posthumously exhumed carcass’. It is extraordinary that JLB Smith, a self-taught ichthyologist with only 17 scientific papers on fish to his name thus far in his career, was able to master the anatomy of a strange fish so quickly and competently. His anatomical description of the coelacanth was only superseded by the extremely detailed descriptions and drawings published by a team of French scientists 20 years later.